


Reign Fall

by larklure



Series: A War of Ice and Ember [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Civil War, Knights - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-03 05:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14561880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larklure/pseuds/larklure
Summary: In the wake of the Northern war, Eric comes to a crossroads he cannot walk away from. Does he stay with the Candorines and Jack in quiet recovery, or return to the Southern Pride and confront not only his family's civil war, but the very catalyst of his birth. Whatever Eric decides, his actions will prove to mean more than he may be ready to accept.





	1. A Weakening Force

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! I am so excited to begin writing the continuation of "If Eternal Winter, If Eternal Snow". I have been sitting on ideas ever since I finished the first part, and now that college is coming to a close (graduation, is that you?) I can devote more of my time to this work. I hope you are all well, and I cannot wait to start another chapter with you!
> 
> As before, this work will be accompanied by a playlist, which you can find [ here ](https://open.spotify.com/user/elllott/playlist/1jGRmvFjX7XuL5rXdAXS0O?si=2C8stGf7RGe-iRqgs4r_og)
> 
> The title and epigraph for this chapter comes from ionnalee's "Gone"
> 
> Find more of me on my tumblr, [ Larklure ](http://larklure.tumblr.com/)

_On two legs but my feet never touched the ground_  
_I got my head in the soil, leave no prints to be found_  
_The nature's strength, the wonder who I am (Gone)_  
_A weakening force, all echoes from my past_  
_Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone_

 

 

ȹ ȹ ȹ

 

Eric ran. Familiar corridors unfolded unto a path of unknown dangers. He sought some space to hide himself, but he did not yet know how fast the word had traveled, if the servants had learned of what he had done and were sent in search of him. Eric held himself back from crying, only because he knew that once the tears came he would be unable to see through them. He needed to know where he was going, and he needed to go undiscovered.

 

Solace was found where he hoped none would think to look for him, tucked at the top of the manor, so far from the ground that the window at his side showed the arbor, and the river, and beyond it, the sea. Dust in the air clogged his heaving mouth, and finally, between coughing fits, he allowed himself to cry as he’d wanted to do from the very moment of his mistake.

 

It was his mistake, Eric thought, that had brought him here. Not just to this hiding place, but to what had come before. It was Eric’s fault that he could not offer what his father had asked, had come to demand. And Eric’s fault that he cried because he could not be what was wanted of him.

 

When they came, it was much later. Long after the sun had begun to set behind the manor, casting shadows long across the earth. Eric had since calmed enough that he could look out the window, perhaps even convince himself that a short fall would be enough to end his turmoil. No need to say goodbye to anyone, they wouldn’t even notice. Unless his body fell in some place that would inconvenience them.

 

This got Eric crying again, and he smacked at himself, willing calm, laying out admonition at himself. Stupid Eric, foolish Eric. Weak, weak little Bittle. You have such strong parents, such brave cousins, and yet you are nothing.

 

“Oh my son, what has happened now?”

 

The voice terrified Eric, not because he had not expected it, but because he had. His mother used the kind voice, the one that had sometimes given praise, but so often talked him down after another of his mistakes.

 

He turned and saw her there, her head peeking up into Eric’s resting place, the one place he knew he could truly flee from if need be.

 

“Step away from the window,” his mother said, in a way which broke Eric’s already broken heart. He could not disobey that voice.

 

“I hurt Father,” was all that Eric could reply.

 

“I know,” Suzanne said, “I know.”

 

ȹ ȹ ȹ

 

Eric starred out the gap in the drapes, through which the slowly dawning spring morning broke wet beams of sunlight upon pine trees green from an absence of snow. The air looked wet, even though it was cloudless, and nothing had fallen for several days. Maybe at some other time Eric would have been surprised that the land this far north could turn over to any season beyond winter.

 

He was far too depressed, however, for that thought to be anything but a passing observation. It had not been the first time, either, that Eric had woke to the world around him slowly coming awake from its slumber. Spring would soon give way to summer, and then fall, and then winter’s sleep again. Eric might still be in this bed, unmoving, or somewhere else wishing he could return here.

 

Beside him, Jack’s side of the bed was already empty and cold, a sign that, despite Eric’s own disinterest in anything of the sort, Jack continued his training. The keep, and much of the bastide of Samwell, were slowly being rebuilt after what the _Ossa_ had done. Of the reconstruction, Eric had only heard tell. It had been nearly two months since his waking, and longer still since he’d been outside the walls of the keep on his own feet. Even Jack’s insistence couldn’t prompt him to move most days. He simply lacked the desire for it.

 

But something had changed in the air, something about the way memory rose up like the fat atop fresh milk, waiting to be sieved away. Each time Eric left the memories, turning over to sleep, or to stare aimless for hours at the ceiling, they built upon themselves. Now he dreamed them, felt more than just phantom remembrances when he look about himself. Whether he wanted to or not, he couldn’t forget his home, and everything that had happened there. If anything, every day he avoided it, his home’s presence grew stronger in his heart.

 

Eric rose, aches pulling across his body as they did these days. He’d lost weight, his limbs even thinner, his skin now so sallow once the bruises had faded that he looked more and more like a northerner with each passing day. The clothes that Jack had left out for him, in hopes that he might leave the room, were clearly fashioned smaller to accommodate Eric’s slighter frame.  

 

The course from Jack’s new quarters in the older wing of the keep was still unfamiliar to Eric. It was not often he walked it alone, his feet still warning that he was in the wrong place. The carnage of the _Ossa_ , and _Dratâb,_ had left much of the new structure scarred, and thoroughly desecrated by the dead. The survivors had scrubbed and scrubbed at the stains, but to remove them fully the stone had to be worn away. Eric had taken part in none of it, first because of his coma, and then because he rarely left the chambers he shared with Jack.

 

Finally, after losing himself once to the upper hallways of the old wing, Eric found Faber hall. The great hall beyond, where the first of the reconstruction had been so that the people of the keep could gather to plan and eat, was blocked by a still-foreign sight.

 

At the center of Faber’s giant drum tower, bursting up through the stone floor as though it were nothing but parchment, rose a tree of a kind Eric had never expected to see here in the heart of the north. The bark was the same familiar white and muddled grey. The same flaming crimson leaves which Eric knew, for the trees of its kind grew with vigor in the south. But what was changed beyond Eric’s familiarity, perhaps by divine influence, was the tree’s incredible size. It rose up through the center of the drum tower. Where once the bridge across the space had been, the tree broke through. And above, countless spans, the tree overcame the stained glass ceiling, so that the it rose from the building itself to enter the open air, and the sunlight beyond.

 

It had been more than implied that Eric had brought the tree into being through his embracing of _Dratâb_. That was where Jack had found him, once the god of decay had disappeared and Eric had slumped to the earth, no longer supported by even his own limbs. In the wake of his fall, the red tree had risen in a single fluid motion.

 

Eric could see in it an influence of divinity, and not just in the way the tree grew. But how it seemed to glow, exude from within a potent, present energy. Standing near the tree was like standing near an open hearth, though the touch a fire could bring was more forceful than this one's. No, this was a humming presence, gentle in a way Eric thought neither his own power, nor _Dratâb_ ’s had even been or would ever be.

 

He gave the tree wide berth as he went through Faber and into the great hall, which due to the lateness of the morning was empty save for a few servants who had no doubt worked the early hours so that others among the keep could break fast and start with their work. The far wall was repaired, but only by a rough lumber facade, a placeholder for something more permanent when the weather afforded.

 

There was no sign of Jack, nor any of the other knights, and so Eric turned round and made his way back across the path of the red tree, and toward the equally half-finished great door. It, like the great hall, had suffered a blow which would take time to heal, and resources which Eric wondered if could be found now that many spans of snow did not cover the deeply frozen earth.

 

Eric paused for a moment at the door, knowing that if he were to continue in his path, he would not only be setting foot outside for the first time in many months, but going beyond the bounds of the keep and its purview. But Eric had spent long weeks in bed, pulled under by a relentless, overwhelming force he could not help but blame on anything other than his family and the revelation of their actions. And yet he was also aware, constantly, of the civil war which surely tore them physical and mental wounds. Even if no blow from their fighting ever landed on Eric’s flesh, he would be marred by their conflict for the rest of his days.

 

He could feel the truth of that. Eric opened the great door, and stepped out into the light.

 

 

 


	2. In My Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It goes better than expected, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epigraph from the wonderful Anohni's "In My Dreams."
> 
> Thank you for all for your excited with the return of this series! Updates will be weekly every Sunday for a while until the semester finally ends an I can graduate (Yikes!)

In my dreams, you don't love me  
In my dreams, you come hurt me  
In my dreams, you don't want  
Don't want, don't want the best for me

 

ȹ ȹ ȹ

 

Spring had brought with it a fertile scent to the air. Green perfumed each breath, even though the evergreens and their pine needles were the only trees to have recovered much of their color, the undergrowth besides still brown. Eric stood upon the threshold, seeing the outside world unfiltered for one of the first times since his waking. He found, after considering the cloud-grey afternoon sun upon the trees, that there was a beauty to winter that he had not noticed until it was gone. It seemed that early spring in the north was as unfortunate to look upon as it was in the south. Muted browns, muddy soil, and the lingering decaying remnants of the fall prior all to really look upon.

 

Eric wandered around the keep, unknowing of where Jack and the others might be training. With the snow gone, they were no longer relegated to the patch of sparring field that they could realistically keep clear during the winter. When Eric rounded the corner of the nearest tower his suspicions were confirmed. They were nowhere in sight, but the sound of training echoed further away, toward where the field stretched long and open, and through which a small stream swollen by melting snow meandered.

 

He did not miss the overturned soil near the base of the keep, not far from the usual location of the training grounds. There, with fresh stone plinths and other demarcations, must have been what remained of the dead. The keep had no temple, nor really a religion which Eric understood to be followed by those within, or the bastide of Samwell at large. Thus there would be no interment into the catacombs beneath a church. Rather there were buried here, near where they had died. Eric took a moment to pay his respects, not sure which of the northern gods to pray to, he was not even sure if they would listen to him.

 

It was not lost on Eric what had befallen the people of the north, in the wake of learning one of their gods, even a dreaded one, had sought to destroy them. Many families which had survived the attack left Samwell, headed for settlements further south. Eric wondered if those that stayed were too stubborn to move, or too poor to do so. Would it have made a difference, either way? As much as he was want to doubt it, _Dratâb_ seemed well and truly gone. Even in his stupor, Eric had had the forethought to ask after the god, and the threat he still posed.

 

Jack had been clear with him, that while he was there Eric would face no danger. It had taken a while for Eric to explain that, while he understood the fact, that was not quite the answer to the question he had proposed. _Oh_ , he’d gotten out of Jack, before a more satisfactory response. _Dratâb_ ’s _Ossa_ were gone, turned away by the death of their leader, or lacking any real mind in the wake of his passing. Jack’s father and a few Candorines had followed the _Ossa_ which fled, long enough to see them finally succumb to the decay that was no longer prevented by some unspoken magic from eating away at their flesh. The broken bodies of once normal creatures were rendered to ephemeral, rotting dust.

 

It seemed too simple, and though Eric had never experienced killing a god before, even now it did not seem as though he had done it right. How could an action of such consequence go without notice by the world around. The sun still rose as it was want to do, the trees breathed softly with the wind. There was no sign, at least that Eric could see, that would suggest an ending of the life of a god.

 

Eric pondered this as he walked from the training field and out into the compressed wild grass which had not yet recovered from the snow that had covered it for many months. The slope of the hill began to work at his legs, and it was clear the he would need to sit down after a while, lest he fall over from his own lack of strength. Thankfully Eric came upon the knights after a while. Right where he had guessed they might be.

 

Jack was at the center, as was usual for him. Chowder, Dex and Nursey were nearest to him, listening earnestly as Jack demonstrated the use of what look to Eric to be a sort of long clubbed weapon, which terminated in a caged… thing. He’d never seen the contraption before in his life, though Jack clearly seemed to know what it was intended for.

 

Ransom and Holster were stood to the side, talking close together, and every now and then touching one another on the arm or shoulder. Eric had, for some time now, wondered at their intimacy. Perhaps the attack of the _Ossa_ had been enough to rattle lose any sort of hesitation they had for whatever they felt. Holster’s blush, something Eric could clearly see even from some distance away, would suggest as much.

 

“Eric?” Jack’s voice called from across the way. He was turned toward Eric, his weapon held loosely between slacked hands. The look on his face, a sort of surprised happiness, said as much to the sight of Eric stood out amidst the grass. “What are you doing out here?”

 

It was enough to remind Eric that he’d come out here for a reason, and that reason was not to be distracted by how nice it was to look at Jack, and not feel as though the man’s worried pity would spill forth like too much wine from a goblet.

 

“Might I speak with you?” Eric asked, knowing in his way that he wouldn’t be denied, especially with such an odd circumstance. Afterall it had been several weeks alone since Eric had risen from his depressed stupor enough to go much of anywhere within the keep.

 

“Here,” Jack said, pushing the yet unnamed weapon into Dex’s hands before walking across the way. He did not stop when he reached Eric, but rather moved him along gently so that they might stand further from the waiting ears of the other knights.

 

“Is something the matter? You could have sent someone, I know that recently you don’t like to be—”

 

“Please,” Eric said. “May I hug you?”

 

Jack seemed startled at the request, but nevertheless nodded his assent. Eric pulled him down, relishing in the bright pain of the other’s facial hair as it brushed along his own bare cheeks. He forgot, often, that Jack was so warm. It radiated from him like a flame, sending sparks down Eric’s limbs, and into his heart. He felt foolish for letting his melancholy put distance between Jack and himself. After a month spent asleep, he’d already lost so much time. Time, he had decided, which would soon be up.

 

“Eric?” Jack asked as the embrace stretched beyond what was perhaps a normal length. Finally Eric pulled away, a small smile on his face.

 

“I wanted to do that so badly,” Eric began. “Before I told you what I came out here to say.”

 

Jack hid his worry well at that statement, better than perhaps even he knew. He remained the same openness he’d had since Eric’s waking. After a moment of looking upon his face, Eric continued.

 

“I’ve come to a decision. I need to go home.”

 

ȹ ȹ ȹ

 

Of the ways Eric had (very briefly) imagined the conversation going, Jack walking off with hardly a motion to follow, not a single word spoken, was not one of them. Perhaps he had forgotten, in his reimagining of Jack, how the man operated. He had never really handled hearing of his companions in danger with much level headedness. That Eric would put himself in that position, it seemed, exaggerated the response.

 

Eric followed Jack until they returned to the quarters which they shared. It was a long walk in silence, but in it was a blessing. Eric could rehearse what he knew he would need to say to alleviate Jack’s worries. Or, if alleviation was not entirely possible, convince Jack of the necessity for this choice which Eric had only come upon that morning. He realized, looking at himself in those few moments between the field and the chamber, how foolish he seemed.

 

“I’m going to sit down, and you can explain to me your _choice_.”

 

The edge to Jack’s voice was something Eric could never forget, but had been unable to remember correctly. It was far more intimidating in person. The crystalline blue of Jack’s eyes did little to help, as they ate into Eric with an intensity that nearly deprived him of his words.

 

“I have been...distant.” Eric knew Jack knew this, had been aware of it for weeks. But yet it was a point to begin, the ignition from where all of this started.

 

“But you must know that it was never something you did, nor some part of me that was unhappy with the way things are," Eric began. "But I dream, Jack. I dream during the night when no one is there to deal with what I see but myself, and in my dreams I am back _there_. I am a child, and I am powerless, and I cannot leave— cannot change what I know will happen. And I know everything already, I know what they did to me, and what I do to them, and I cannot stop any of it.”

 

Jack’s hand upon Eric’s shoulder stopped the stream of words spilling from his mouth. He looked up, sight returning to his eyes. Jack had moved from the chair before his desk to sit beside Eric on the bed. With Jack’s eyes on his, he took several long, cooling breaths. Enough that, when he began to speak again, he did so with strength.

 

“I suppose I have spent all this time thinking about them, thinking about what I might say if I ever see them. How I would look at them, and show them that despite everything I am me, and I love me.” Eric’s voice shook, but he continued. “And I realized, after dreaming of them again last night, that I might not get that opportunity... to look them in the eyes and show them that in the end my life is perfect, because it is mine. If they die in that civil war, Jack, that foolish war, I will never get the closure that I deserve. And I fear, no matter how strong I become, that I will never recover from that.”

 

The air was disturbed, following the purging of months worth of Eric’s thoughts, only by the shaking of his breaths and the soft sound of the cloth upon the bed shifting under his and Jack’s weight. The other looked upon Eric with a changed expression. A mix of understanding, and something quite like heartbreak.

 

“I love you,” he said.

 

That was when Eric broke down into the tears which ad not fallen once in the prior months since his waking. He did nothing to hide them, choosing rather to gaze upon Jack. His small heart, beating so hard in his chest he felt it might burst, was inexplicably full of adoration for the man.

 

“You are too kind to me,” Eric replied.

 

“Only because I was not kind enough, in the beginning.”

 

Jack pulled Eric into his lap, as close as they could get while remaining separate. He pushed several kisses into Eric’s hair. The hot press of skin against his scalp was a relief, a sensation that he could feel without any lingering touch of grief or doubt.

 

“When do we depart?” Jack was still pressed to Eric’s overgrown hair, and for a moment it could have been the words getting lost in the tangle of half curls that drew Eric to a pause. But he knew had not heard incorrectly.

 

“Pardon me?” He said, needing to hear Jack ask again.

 

“When are we heading south?” Jack asked, as though he had never had a doubt in his mind on whether or not he would accompany Eric back to his homeland. As though he didn’t even think of it as a choice, but as an inevitability. “I don’t know if you’re ready to ride on horseback for that long. You need to work to regain your strength, perhaps eat more meat. I would hate to protect you on out journey south, only for you to succumb to something as simple as fatigue.”

 

In his lingering shock Eric let the small chirp, as Jack called it, slide without a response. He was much too overwhelmed by the idea that Jack would join him as he made his slow progress south.

 

“I was never going to ask you to come,” he admitted.

 

After a moment, Jack replied, “I know. But I wasn’t going to let you go alone, even if you wanted to.”


	3. Golden Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric and Jack depart for the south, and all that awaits them there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge huge apologies for my absence between updates! I did many things: Wrote my senior thesis (60 pages!), graduated college last weekend, drank so so so much chocolate milk in celebration! 
> 
> But we are back and the story continues! I hope we can get the ball rolling, and really see what is waiting for Eric and Jack!
> 
> Epigraph from this chapter comes from Agnes Obel's "Golden Green".

 

All my eyes can see is  
Born out of your imagery  
It’s coming at, it’s coming at, it’s coming at my heart  
To scorch the earth with fire

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

Jack’s parents had left two weeks prior, a brief trip to their own township nearer the border of the northern and southern lands. They had left in part to escort the families who chose to leave Samwell after the attack of the  _ Ossa _ . Because of Jack, Eric knew the trip was also a way to replenish the knights which Lord Robert had brought with on their first journey north several months prior. Many of those original men and  women had died, and though Lady Alicia seemed hopeful that more would be willing to return to Samwell to help in the reconstruction efforts, Eric had his doubts. There had been much death, and not a kind which was easy on the heart or mind ( _ if a kind existed, Eric did not know of it. _ ) 

 

The Zimmermanns prior departure meant that Eric’s own, accompanied by Jack, would be all the easier. He knew that they would never have agreed with Eric’s choice, not that they had the right to decide on the matter. It was best, though, to leave while they were still many uncounted miles away. 

 

Leaving Lardo and Shitty, it seemed, was a different matter entirely. 

 

“Absolutely not,” Lardo said, turning away from Eric, who had sought her out in her forge to gather implements he would need for the trip south. “You must be a bigger fool than Zimmermann is.”

 

Eric gapped at her, not quite sure what he had expected from his friend. Perhaps he should have seen this response coming. He hadn’t considered Lardo as a barrier in his departure. His mistake, clearly. 

 

“Lardo, it isn’t a choice,” he argued. “I have to go help my family!”

 

“Of course it’s a choice, Bitty!” 

 

He’d told Lardo, only the bits that he could bear retelling. She knew of the civil war, and part of what his parents had done. But the full picture was hidden from her, as much as it was hidden from Shitty. The latter of which came from a back room, clearly having been pretending to work (and had likely been napping, if the creases in his hair and indentation of his sleeve’s seam along his face were any indication.)

 

“I agree with her, little turd,” Shitty said as he slung his long arm around Lardo’s shoulders. She gave him sharp look but left his arm there. 

 

“It’s a fool’s errand, and they don’t even deserve half of your assistance. And what is the worst that happens? They lose the war. It’s not as though one horrible monarch being replaced by another would really impact—”

 

“ _ Lardo _ !” Eric hollered, startling all three of them with the intensity of his barely restrained anger. “I am doing this, and you have no right to judge the where or why or how. Now if you won’t give me the things I need I will  _ take _ them.”

 

Shitty’s mustache was like a living thing, twitching about his face with unnatural animation. Beneath it his lips could be seen, worrying away at themselves.

 

“I think you might want to listen to him, Lards,” he offered, wavering back so that he now supported Eric. “I don’t think we’ll be changing his mind any time soon.”

 

Lardo gave Eric a long, simmering look, addressing each side of his face with equal depth and intensity. Eric won the war of attrition, however, and she finally turned away, extracting herself from Shitty’s annoying energy. 

 

“Traitor” Eric heard her mutter as she left Shitty, and the sound of rattling metal signaled the beginning of her assistance in the preparations. 

 

Eric didn’t need help finding his baselard. It was where it had been the first time he’d seen it freshly reforged from Jack’s ruined sword. The blue Anointed steel shone beautifully, in a way that a weapon of war really had little right. The hum of Eric’s fire had been quiet for a long time, longer than he could remember ever having been in the past. Even the first touch of his fingertips against the cold blade did not call it forth. 

 

Without a second thought he pulled the baselard from its brace upon the wall, meaning to place it softly into a supple leather scabbard which Lardo had crafted for him as a present for “waking up from death warmed-over”. It was a beautiful thing, and Eric couldn’t miss that, nestled within the designs upon the leather, Lardo had included not only his family’s crest, but the Candorine’s as well, a round circle enclosing three trees.

 

But the baselard was heavier than he remembered, and Eric struggled for a moment attempting to guide the wickedly sharp steel into the scabbard. When he finally did so, it felt as though he’d spent far too long out in the sun, feeling faint and warm in a way that felt more exhaustive than comforting. He was unsettled by his weakness, and took a moment to gather himself. He did not want Lardo to see him as such, lest it provide her with another avenue to refuse his departure. 

 

Eric turned about, and let out a sigh of relief at the sight of Lardo on the other side of the large room, blocked partially from view by rows of things carefully organized. Even with their disagreement, he admired that Lardo stood up for her companions. Perhaps in any other circumstance Eric would have listened to her advice (is it advice if it is yelled?). But seeing his family again, dealing with the mess they had left him, was not an event which could afford Eric listening to anyone but himself.

 

Nevertheless it struck him that, even if things went the way he hoped, Eric might not see Lardo for many months. If he returned to see her, how different would he be? Would she forgive him for leaving? If he failed he would likely never know the look of disappointment on her face. The thought was as comforting as it was bitter. 

 

Eric returned to the work table, his equipment put together in a bundle he’d seen Jack and the others do several times when they meant to travel before enrobing.  After a moment’s pause, he pulled Lardo into a close embrace. They were of a height, so that her grown out hair brushed upon his lips as he pressed his face into the hug. She gripped him in a crushing hold.

 

He couldn’t help but notice something sharp jabbed into his side, and pulled back from her with a question already on his mind. 

 

In her right hand was one of the spiked contraptions, or a part of it at least. Perhaps it was the strange caged bit, which Eric had seen on the end of Jack’s club. Lardo, quick as a dart, knew what he was going to ask before he could. 

 

“It’s a flame cage,” she offered, holding the steel-wrought implement so that Eric could better look upon it. “Jack designed it following the  _ Ossa _ attacks. He thought it was time to evolve, especially if the  _ Slanted _ are changing too. You light the chamber in the center, and the cage keeps it from going out when you strike it against a body, or in Nurse’s case, anything in the near vicinity.”

 

Lardo turned to put the piece down, and picked up an already assembled unit from behind her. Eric looked at the weapon of war and was at once unnerved and surprised by the sight. Jack had made it, that much was good to know. But the wickedness of it, the way the steel would surely cut the flesh, and the fire at its heart burn out what was left from the blow, made a pit open up in Eric’s core. He still did not know what he was, in the scope of the  _ Slanted _ . Yes, he was made. But did the nature of his birth really change what defined him from the other  _ Slanted _ ? Though he looked it, Eric felt on the average day that he was no more human than the creatures which howled at the moon.

 

“It’s lovely,” Eric replied, rejecting Lardo’s offer to hold it with a quick gesture from his hands. 

 

She dropped the thing, and after a moment spent simply looking at Eric, pulled him into another of her surprisingly firm embraces. 

 

“Take care of each other,” she whispered into his cheek, and then the pressure of her arms around Eric’s body was gone, and Lardo disappeared into the depths of her carefully maintained shelves. .

 

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

On his final pass through their shared rooms, Eric took a moment to look upon the space he might leave forever. The stone was aged here in a way it had not been in the younger part of the keep. The corners of the blocks were rounded by time, discolored here and there by old traces of soot, or bleached by the sun. 

Despite the melancholy which had begun to wear upon Eric like a wet cloak, this chamber and its contents had been a comfort to him over the past months. The bed soft, and most importantly, often occupied by Jack. The adjoined bath a place where Eric had slowly learned to come out of himself, and show a person who lingered inside, beneath all the trauma, and all the history he would rather forget. 

 

The intimacy they had built together was something Eric hoped would never be lost. But it would be foolish for Eric to ignore where they were returning to, and if they would ever come back. Among the Southern Pride, Eric was already an outsider, a strange boy who was spoken of in whispers.  _ There’s the boy who took his father’s handsome face with his touch. There is the changeling, the fairy child, the freak. There is the mistake, a sign of impiety on the Bittle house. _

 

Then add Eric’s relation with a man. A man from the strongest family in the north. Eric had no idea what to expect upon his arrival. He’d hardly spoken his worries to Jack. Unsure how to warn the man of what was coming, when he didn’t even know himself. To imagine every possibility felt like an impossible task, and yet his mind worried away, running in cyclical loops about what his parents would say upon his return, with Chevalier Jack Laurent Zimmermann in tow like some sort of won prize, or captured enemy, or sworn guard (of which the lines were so blurred Eric could not even see their trace). 

 

But then, Eric thought of Suzanne, of the way she had played up her earnestness for the Zimmermanns, wearing their colors and gifting them a quilt of the southern style. She was a clever woman, of that there was little doubt in Eric’s mind. That was the very reason dread dwelt like a living thing in his gut. It was one thing to fear his father’s actions, and another thing altogether to fear what his mother’s mind was capable of achieving when there was something she sought. 

 

Eric took the Bittle cookbook, and the terrible letters it contained within, and placed it in a featureless leather satchel. There he hoped it would remain until he could once again give it to his mother’s keeping. It had once been a symbol of Eric’s place among his family. He knew the book by heart, had been responsible for many of the spills which now scented the pages of the tome with hints of lemon and cinnamon. But it was changed now. Turned to a remembrance of  the innocent life Eric had lost, and the cost of what it had taken to become what he now was. 

 

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

The cobblestone yard outfront the main door was occupied by a rather bizarre looking horse-drawn vehicle. Unlike the carriage which Eric had ridden north, what felt like a lifetime ago, this one had six wheels. Its windows were of a singular green-tinted glass covered by iron cross hatching, and the compartment between the second and third axles was covered in a thick waxed canvas stretched in a rough curved shape. In all, Eric had little idea what he was looking at, or why Jack was sat proudly atop the stageman’s bench behind two impossibly black horses. 

 

“What in all the gods’ names…”

  
  


“It’s of my mother’s family’s design,” he said, dropping from the bench to assist Eric in loading his things inside the canvas portion, which could be unfastened and opened to reveal a cargo hold of sorts. “It was made for hauling their lords and ladies. The Zimmermanns were not the only warring family in the north. But whereas we fight the  _ Slanted _ , my mother’s family fought other families for land rights and control over trade routes. These war carriages were like their command posts.”

 

Jack looked near beaming as he relayed his family’s rather colorful history to Eric. He’d learned long ago not to be surprised at what Jack’s family was capable of. Everyone in the north seemed just a touch eccentric, the monster hunting family doubly so. 

 

“Following their marriage, my mother gifted the use of these war carriages to my father, a sort of wedding gift if you will. But since most of the  _ Slanted _ they fought dwelled deeper and deeper into the woods, using these for hunting never really came into fashion.

 

“Following the  _ Ossa  _ attack, my mother made a few changes to this one’s design, and I would assume taught Lardo some arts of the family craft in the process. Since we’ll be crossing the territory between here and your family’s land largely on unpopulated roads, I thought it best we take this.

 

“And you,” Jack finally began to wind down. “You seem as though riding on horseback for the duration of our journey would not be the best.”

 

Eric felt a bit overwhelmed. Partly because he’d clearly missed a lot of activity in his down time, but also that Jack could see the weakness in him. Was it that apparent that he felt more and more flagged since his waking, and not better? Jack’s kindness, well placed as it was, pointed to a worry which Eric had only just begun to pass over, a tongue on the socket newly missing its tooth. It was something he had to figure out in the weeks before their arrival at Eric’s home. He couldn’t afford to be weak in front of them. 

 

“Thank you, Jack. This looks wonderful, if not entertaining.”

 

Eric tucked his anxieties away, and after another hour spent preparing, set off with Jack on the long road home. 


	4. Kindled Echoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric and Jack continue their journey south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter for you all today! I had a lot of fun writing this bit, I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Title from the song "Kindled Echoes" by the wonderful Martin O'Donnell

 

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

The first week on the road passed without incident. During the day, Jack rode on the bench out front of the carriage, sometimes speaking in hushed tones to the horses who trod diligently along. Eric had learned, through listening to Jack speak when he had the energy to sit atop the driver’s bench, that the horses were named Iris and Lily, after two of Jack’s favorite flowers (as Eric was realizing, Jack had a habitual inclination for the obscure, historic, or some combination of the two). They were sisters, and Jack had been with them since they were foles. 

 

When Eric couldn’t keep his head up any longer, he climbed through the small opening beneath the step, sliding the wooden panel away to reveal the interior space of the carriage. Sitting inside was a rather unique experience. Green light from the windows fell slantwise across the floor and illuminated the dark leather benches near the front. There was plenty of space upon them for pillows and other elements of comfort, which Eric later learned was where he and Jack would sleep most nights, as the weather was still quite too cool for setting a tent.

 

A small desk could be folded out between the two benches, clearly meant to be used for planning as a map was embossed upon the hardwood. Eric found it was nearly impossible to do much of anything on the table, with the bumps of the rough hewn cobble road which eventually gave out to rutted dirt pathways that made up the road for many miles. He spent most of his time asleep when not spent talking with jack, or gazing out into the wooded landscape beyond. 

 

“It seems so different, in the absence of snow,” Eric said one afternoon pushing into the second week of travel. They had just passed over a lumber bridge, built overtop a river swollen from the melting snow. It spilled its banks, and the smell of musky water and mud pervaded the air for some time before and after crossing.

 

“It tends to, yeah,” Jack agreed, the reigns held so loosely in his hands that were the horses to so much as whinney they’d fall from his grip. “But when you spend enough time here, you learn that winter and the other seasons are not so much opposites, as shades of the same colour.”

 

Eric looked upon the trees, not quite sure what Jack meant, but trying to figure it out. Jack must have seen him thinking it over.

 

“Euh, or maybe it’s different. They’re all the same family, slowly fading between themselves, the green spring into the yellow summer, orange autumn into the white-brown winter…”

 

Eric nodded, knowing that Jack was watching him from the corner of his eye. He turned, and because he hadn’t in a little while, and felt like it, kissed softly against the stubble which Jack had kept on and off over the past months. It brought a laugh out of the man, a soft one, more like a huff than anything else. Eric trusted Lily and Iris’s navigational skills enough to distract Jack with another kiss, and another. 

 

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

Later, on a night like those before, Eric helped Jack mold the benches into a bed, turning down the back of one so that it presented a flat area where they could lay down. There were no windows overhead, but Eric imagined what the stars might have been like, seen through the branches of the pine trees. The forest grew noticeably thinner with each day they moved south, pines and other coniferous trees giving way to the birches and hearty oaks, which Eric knew would then give way to red maples and willows and the wild cherry trees no doubt already pink in the dawning heat of a southern summer. 

 

They laid in the full dark, weak light from the partial moon overhead not enough to grant any real illumination. They often started the night as such, Eric curled against Jack’s broad side, mumbling between the two so as not the disrupt the fragile silence. Eric fell asleep, his hand held softly by Jack’s.

 

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

Eric ran through the peach arbor, dodging where he could to avoid dropped fruit that was hurled at his back, an easy target. The rotten pieces, some which had fallen a week prior, exploded upon tree trunks, the ground, and occasionally his back. Peaches had a particularly foul rotting scent, especially ones which had spent several days fermenting in the sun. He knew, from experience, that it would take many thorough washes to get the reek out of his hair. 

 

His cousins and some of the manor children, several of whom were twice his size, chased after him with a vicious sort of frenzy. There were likely packs of feral dogs which hunted their prey with less fervor, rage, and sprayed saliva than these children. Eric took the chance to look backwards, only for one of the faster girls to bend down, turning a fallen peach against him. 

 

It struck Eric across the cheek, the pit of the rotten fruit striking hard enough to sting. Eric, a shock of sudden and terrible heat rushing through his core, stumbled in his stride and then fell. The others were on him in seconds, pulling at his clothes, or where his skin was already exposed, jamming crushed fruit pulp and mud into him with bruising force. 

 

When Eric began to dry, trying with every miniscule part of his being to restrain the fire that raged through his small limbs, his cousins took the excuse to push him farther.

 

“Cryin’ already?” one of them mocked. The dirt in Eric’s face and mouth was too much for him to tell who. “I thought Faeries liked squattin’ in the mud. Hmm, those must be some of the less  _ fruity _ kind.”

 

That was punctuated by another fistful of the crushed pulp.

 

Eric curled in on himself, hoping beyond hope that he could just fold himself into nothingness. Or better, if the earth itself would just opened its maw and swallow him. After a time the novelty of Eric weeping into the dirt wore away, and the pack of kids wandered off. The laughter lasted far longer than any other noise, echoing off the green light beneath the boughs of the peach trees. 

 

When he could finally stop his sobs from wracking his body, Eric sat up and nearly fell back over from fright. There, beside the trunk of one of the trees, stood Reed. This cousin was just like any other, a stature at his age that suggested great height and strength in adulthood. Blonde hair which shone like polished electrum. He was handsome, even as his face was downturned in obvious pity. 

 

He opened his mouth, “ _ Bitty _ ?”

 

Eric stared at him from beneath his filth. 

 

“Excuse me?”

 

_ “Bits!” _

  
  


Eric jolted upright, nearly knocking Jack beneath the jaw with his sudden movement. He was drenched entirely, a cold sweat which thoroughly sucked the heat from him. Beside him, barely visible in the dark, Jack looked on with marked worry. His fierce eyes were wide, the whites of them impossibly round. 

 

“Another nightmare?”

 

“Another memory,” Eric replied, turning over so that he could put his feet on solid ground. 

 

Standing would not be smart, so he sat there, gathering himself enough for his rabbit heart to slow. The air was indescribably cold with the sweat slowly drying on his skin. His night things were drenched, and would need to be changed if he could even think about trying to sleep. Not that Eric really felt in the mood to return to it. 

 

He had just begun to disrobe, meaning at least to remove himself of the uncomfortable dampness of his clothes, when the horses gave a worrying noise from outside. Jack was on his feet immediately, drawing a short blade that was stored in a sheath, left connected to his belt on a rung by the door. Eric, unsure of what to make of the situation, quickly pulled on fresh pants and a new tunic, forgoing his normal woven belt for the sake of celerity. 

 

Outside the darkness of night was oppressive, Jack only visible because of the staunch disparity between his snow white skin and the ochre of Lily and Iris. The sisters were stamping their feet, heaving from their nostrils as though they’d just dashed through a shallow river upcurrent.  

 

“What’s the matter?”

 

Response came not from Jack, but from a piercing cry that seemed to echo from all directions. Eric wished suddenly that he had his blade at his waist, not that he had the strength to swing it with any confidence. Jack turned about, looking for the source of the call.

 

It became clear (as clear as it could, given the circumstances) what was making the noise. From a thick patch of darkness, trees blocking out the starry sky, came a suddenly bright glow. A thing leaking red oily light swooped  from the darkness of the thick canopy, and overhead Jack and Eric swing in a single unmoving glide. Then it darted to the left, its own illumination growing bright with the sudden motion. In the half-light, Eric could see the almost familiar upturned nose of a barn bat, though none Eric had ever seen glowed with this sort of unnatural fire. 

 

The light was enough that, those few insects already awake in the spring night, were alight in the air heading directly to the source. With ease, the flaming bat simply careened its body into the swarms, open mouthed. 

 

Eric and Jack watched, speechless, as the singular bat grew in numbers. First two more, and then four, and soon a swarm of bats themselves were aloft, lighting the sky with their spectral, swooping flames. 

 

“Have you ever seen something like this before?”

 

Jack turned from the sight overhead to look at Eric, the expression on his face unreadable in the low light. 

 

“Non,” he replied, something equally unclear in his voice. “Never.”


	5. In the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stay at an Inn, and some obvious eavesdropping.

 

 

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

Eric woke the next morning to the familiar ache behind his eyes of a night spent without enough sleep. Fresh light leaked languidly through green windows, alerting him to the fact that his rising was later than he had grown accustomed to. Jack was predictable, readying to depart before the sun itself had fully crested the horizon. It was best, he said, to be on the road early and done with the day’s traveling well before night fell again. From what Eric had seen in the north, he couldn’t help but agree. Things moved unhindered in the dark.

 

But this morning Jack was sat on the opposite bench, the space between himself and Eric made clear by the desk folded down. Upon it, the still foreign and aged pages of the Zimmermann caudex sat, exuding a faint musty smell. Jack had it opened, and has turned on it a look which Eric had seen often enough, critical in its nature and unyielding. 

 

“Jack?”

 

His gaze rose to Eric, and it was a moment before the flint in those blue eyes fell away, replaced by what might have been an apology. 

 

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” 

 

He moved to close the book, but was stopped by a light hand atop his. Eric did not break the contact, nor allowed his eyes to waver from where they held Jack’s

 

“You did not. What are you doing?”

 

“I thought I might let you sleep in,” he said, clearly maneuvering around the question. “It was a rather sleepless night for us, considering. I thought it best if we started a touch later this morning.”

 

He looked at Jack, and then down to the page he had attempted to close. There wasn’t a single word Eric could read there, upside down or otherwise. But what he saw could be understood from any angle. An illustration of fire. 

 

Eric pulled his hand back, and though nothing prevented Jack from now closing the book, his hand remained paused as it was above the parchment.  From the edge of his vision Eric could see Jack’s full attention on him, cataloguing his reaction. After a moment he spoke, his words careful. 

 

“It is not about you.” His accent, which normally colored his words shortly after waking, was nearly imperceptible. “I was looking for the bats, the ones we saw last night.”

 

The reminder was unneeded. He could still see the image of them circling in patterns when he closed his eyes. The thought that the page was unrelated to Eric was a relief, but Jack’s worry brought his own forward. 

 

“And?”

 

“They are a kind of  _ slanted _ , my family called them  _ Chiroptera Ingea _ in the records,  _ Firestarters. _ ” 

 

Eric looked back to the page. It was still unclear what the fire illustrations was attempting to represent, but it seemed clearer now that it was not in reference to whatever Eric had assumed it was. 

 

“I’d never heard of them before,” he replied. “Though it is not as though the south has an abundance of  _ slanted _ , or really those that know of them.”

 

Jack nodded with this, moving his hand down the page. The rasp of parchment over his callused skin brought goose flesh across Eric’s arms, and shivers down his back. The other seemed to be weighing his reply, his hand upon the page a few moments longer before it came. 

 

“They went extinct nearly a century ago.” 

 

Eric’s confusion was no doubt visible. They had, in their swarming last night, seemed the last thing from extinct. 

 

“You never heard of them before because no one had, not for a hundred years. Not even my father ever mentioned…”

 

“Yet last night–”

 

“Yet last night they were out in number, in a number that should be impossible for any dead thing.” 

 

Jack’s attention was now fully held by Eric. He looked as unsettled and confused as Eric felt. What did it mean, that a species which had not existed for countless decades had made a resurgence that should have been impossible. Eric could count on one hand the theories he had, all of which involved a god of some sort taking waking to take revenge on the people who killed one of their own. 

 

“Could it be one of the gods, one like  _ Dratâb _ ?” Eric asked. 

 

“I haven’t the slightest idea, Eric.”

 

They spent the short remainder of their morning in silence, nearly soundless even when Eric rose to make breakfast without lighting a fire. It felt strange, moving about in the morning light. There wasn’t a single sign of the event they had both witnessed. If not for Jack’s apparent testament to the fact, part of Eric would not have been surprised in the least if last night had not been a particularly vivid dream. Not the first time by any means that Eric had ever been visited by a stranger, carrying a message both fearful and imperceptible. 

 

ȹ  ȹ  ȹ

 

The end of their first fortnight on the road coincided with their arrival upon a small inn, and the settlement which seemed to be built around it. There was nothing else for many miles, the shifting land of river valleys and highlands thickly forested, giving little place for farming of any kind to be done. Eric, on his way north some many months ago, had noticed as such. But then he  had taken a different route, a longer one, so as to spend the most time near settlements. Jack did not seem to think it necessary, and as such this was the first sign of human life they had seen in several days. 

 

Eric waited beside Jack as he spoke quickly with the inn’s host, who brought a woman out to help take care of the horses. If either seemed surprised at the sight of Jack’s rather unconventional carriage, they did not show it. In fact, they gave Eric a more thorough viewing than either the horses or the carriage. Perhaps it was his coloring, more tan than Jack and themselves, blonde in a way that Eric had really only noticed Lady Alicia being. It wasn’t outwardly obvious that he was from the south, but the conclusion could be decided upon with very little effort. 

 

After the horses were put in the inn’s stables for the evening, and the carriage prepared to go uninhabited for a night, Eric followed Jack through the low doorway and into the bright warm light of the inn’s great room. 

 

Tables spanned the space, many of those in the middle distance between the hearth and the stairs were occupied. The smell of cooking meat, what appeared to be a deer held over the flames by a spit, was nearly overpowering. Under it were the rustic smells of baked bread, ale, and the familiar tartness of warm bodies and little soap. 

 

A serving woman with three giant mugs in hand smiled as she passed, taking Jack and Eric to a table where they could wait while the host readied a room for them. Eric realized rather lately that he hadn’t a single coin to his name, and was reliant entirely on Jack’s hospitality, and gold. It was an unsettling feeling, depending on the fortune and graciousness of another. Jack seemed to notice Eric’s hesitance when it came time to tip the serving woman after she dropped a plate of cut meat and bread, but said nothing of it, choosing instead to send a small smile his direction. 

 

Eric ate with vigor, happy despite the poor seasoned meat to be eating something for the first time in two weeks that he had not had to prepare himself. Jack tucked in, disappearing his entire plate and both portions of bread before another round was delivered. Eric hid his amusement at the other’s appetite with a swig from his ale. It was honeyed, and perhaps spiced by something which Eric did not recognize, a northern taste perhaps. It did not go unnoticed by him that Jack did not touch his mug, rather after a third pass from the woman asked if they had water to be boiled and made ready to drink. 

 

It was already well dark by the time they finished their meals. The noise of the great room had dwindled, traveling parties and individual guests slowly returning to their rooms. Eric was partly surprised when one table in its entirety left, heading not for a room within the inn, but to their homes in the settlement beyond. Further evidence to Eric’s guess that the inn was the unofficial center of the small town. 

 

In the lowered atmosphere of the now emptying room, Eric caught a strain of conversation which lilted on a northern tongue from a table to his right. The party might have been hunters, if only the texture of their rough clothing and the state of their exposed skin (dirt streaked, showing signs of travel by foot) was any indication. 

 

By any standard, the loudest of the group was quite soft spoken, a woman who though clearly held the attention of the table, struck Eric as the exact opposite of someone like Shitty, whose charisma garnered the ears and eyes of others. This woman, Eric thought as he watched her talk from over the rim of his ale mug, was listened to because of respect. Her companions knew when to turn their ears. 

 

The woman surely looked it. She was weathered, her hair the texture of broom bristles well-used, greyed at the temples and along the crown of her head. It was pulled back into a rough braid which had seen the worse half of a day (or perhaps longer) fashioned in such a way, stray sections lofted about her so that in the warm illumination she seemed blurred. Her companions listened, some with clear disbelief, as she recounted to them something she’d heard from another traveler.

 

“It started in a tributary to the north of the Wamanasee river,” she said, turning her words over as she picked at the remains of her plate. If she knew she had the table enthralled, she did not show it. “The man said he was out, setting lines along the bank, checking bait he’d set the night prior.”

 

Eric knew the trick, though it often worked only for hunting alligators, as they were too big to be eaten by anything else. Fishing in that way netted little, as herons and others tended to pick off the easy prey. It must have been different up north. 

 

“One of the lines was stuck, not a surprise if you’d seen the weeds that can grow up there. He, thinking it was caught in a cat tail, gave it a good tug to see where it was snarled.”

 

The woman paused, and by now Jack had noticed Eric’s distraction, and too had turned an open ear. 

 

“The line pulled, something stuck in the shallows, a rock or something. He traced the line, found a long run of moss covered something, and put his hand on it to shove it aside. That strong fishing line is dear, wouldn’t want to waste it because it got caught on a bogged down branch. But the thing didn’t move at first, and then when it did my friend was staring down the open mouth of whatever the thing was. The line was inside, hooked in its throat something foul.”

 

Eric felt a touch disappointed, having expected to hear something truly unnerving, with the way the table around the woman had drawn close. What she’d described sounded like any other snapping turtle in the south’s ponds and bog fields. He turned to Jack, and eyebrow raised. The other though did not look as such. He wore a frown, his head now turned to better look at the woman speaking. She wasn’t finished. 

 

“He knew better than to reach in and get the hook out, too late at that point, and not worth losing a few fingers for the copper it would cost to replace. But someone hadn’t been so smart, or lucky. Behind the hook, peeking out from the back of this things mouth like some kinda fool’s joke, was a hand, five-fingered and all.”

 

It was perhaps that the woman who spoke was so well respected that the table around her did not dissolve into laughter the way the knights at the keep might have around Shitty, even though her story was just as strange and oddly dramatic. But there was a serious edge to her eyes which was intimately chilling. She’d spoken to the man who had seen this. It might have been that fact alone, seeing someone who had been so disturbed, that gave her and equal look. She turned, acknowledging that Eric and Jack had been listening the whole time. She wasn’t admonishing when she spoke. 

 

“Best look after yourselves on the road. Something’s gotten into the water, who knows how long until it gets into the land.”

 

“Much appreciated,” Jack said, tipping to her the full mug of ale which had sat untouched for the duration of their meal. Eric couldn’t help but notice the tremor of his hand, which he disappeared beneath the table. For a long time he did not meet Eric’s eyes. 

 

“Should we head to our room?” 

 

“Yes,” Jack replied, standing quickly enough to send his bench screeching across the stone floor. “It’ll be an early morning.”


	6. I Wake Up and I Wonder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack continues with Eric, unknowing of the other's plans come the end of their journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epigraph from Kiki and Lykki Li's "Birds" A Capella version.

_Remember when you kissed me?_   
_You said you couldn't come nearer_   
_And with every heartbeat_   
_Our love was so bittersweet_   
_I don't wanna fall out of love_   
_Don't wanna fall out of love_

 

ȹ ȹ ȹ

 

Like children, the torments that they inflict grow as they do. Eric slowly came into his adolescence, and with his maturation (quickened by trauma’s lingering scars) came the weight of his isolation. The manor children slowly dwindled from the roving pack, selected as they were for positions amongst the household staff, or as squires, apprentices, or assistants for the many people who worked on the Bittle estate, and its surrounding lands. They had little time to chase Eric barefoot through the groves, hurling at him more than just taunts. Now when they crossed paths, it was the absence of their acknowledgement which landed like a blow. Even in a room occupied to the brim, Eric felt impossibly alone.

 

Unlike those children who he had rarely found peace amongst, Eric had neither the liberty of choice nor the obligation of his parent’s expectations. The scars across his father’s face attested to the fact that Eric was not destined to be a knight, nor could he be forced into it. For a year after Eric had sat in a limbo, doing nothing for lack of direction, nor wanting anything that was suggested (hunting had been as difficult to stomach as becoming a squire, and neither his parents sought to send him to the keeper of the grove, as that labor was beneath even him).

He had wished so ardently to work in the kitchens, but the servants there had long knew of his queer behavior. Eric was allowed only when his mother, or his grandmother Moo Maw, were present to over see him. In their absence, he wasn’t trusted to handle a paring knife, let alone fire the ovens.

 

He was there one day preparing the last few morsels of a batch of peach tarts. The air near the stone ovens was fragrant with the pitted fruit, cooking off its sugars at the heart of carefully folded layers of dough. He’d snuck in between the luncheon and dinner preparations, in the sparse hour directly after noon when he could work without being harrassed. He was the only person on the west side of the kitchen, his isolation occupied by strained melodies hummed underbreath.

 

It was Moo Maw’s fault, then, for startling him.

 

“Dicky, your mother has been asking after you for well near an hour,” she said, appearing from between the polished slate countertops as though she’d coalest from the kitchen steam itself.

 

Eric, who had a wrought iron pan nearly pulled from the oven, lost his grip upon the thick cloth which guarded his skin. The pan fell, and he experienced in that split moment what happened during the bright, liquid center of an accident. Time slowed, and he saw the iron pan, its contents hot from the oven, splashing across the floor. He reached out for it, taking it in his uncovered palm. With a celerity bought not from pain but the fear of it, he lifted the pan and dropped it upon the cook surface.

 

“Dear gods, what were you thinking!” Moo Maw shouted, nearly wrenching his arm from its socket as she hauled Eric across the kitchen to submerge his hand within a basin of collected water waiting to be used for the washing. It was room temperature, not as cool in the late summer air as it might have been. It did little for Eric’s hand, there was no pain.

 

“I didn’t think, I’m sorry!” Eric said, his shock so strong that perhaps the pain had not yet come.

 

She pulled his hand from the water, revealing perfectly intact skin, pink only because he had the tendency for it in his tone. She stared at him, and then at his hand in equal intervals. Moo Maw realized before Eric what it meant that his hand was unhurt. Even as he turned beseeching to her, she had made her mind up.

 

“Please, don’t tell Mother of this!”

 

“Worry not, my Eric,” she said, taking him by the arm in a grip that suggested the opposite. “It is your mother who has some secrets she’ll be divulging.”

 

ȹ ȹ ȹ

  


Coming back to the body was a tiresome task, one which grew harder with each waking. Eric turned over, needing the necessary span of time to remember where he was, and why his body was slick with sweat. _._ The inn, he thought, it probably wasn’t even close to morning. The dream-memory, as they so often where a combination, each part indiscernible from the other, must have come on shortly after he’d closed his eyes. Travel and the weariness which resided as deep as his bones made short work of the liminal place between waking and sleep.

 

Jack was a presence next to him, tucked under the same sheet but distanced so that Eric could shift about without their bodies touching. It was a relief, in part. He could roll to his feet without waking Jack. If travel was tiring for him, his partner needed the rest even more.

 

A soft sigh, and then the rasp of skin over rough fabric signified that Eric had failed in leaving the mattress without waking his bed partner. Resigning to the conversation that was likely to come, he turned back to rest himself against the headboard.

 

How often was it that Eric saw Jack by halflight? As always, it did little to diminish the other’s beauty, only perhaps hiding the depth of him in the shadows. Were he to light a candle, the sharp edges of Jack’s face would return, sending that telltale ache to the core of Eric’s being.

 

They stared at each other, both having lived this waking more than a dozen times in the past fortnight. Despite the circumstances, there was a sweetness in the ability to wake like this, Eric so close to someone who held him dearly. Most days it did not feel tangible, as though if Eric were to look away for too long the veil would be lifted and he’d find himself alone again.

 

Almost in opposition of his thoughts, Jack reached out with an open hand, running it slowly along Eric’s exposed arm. The sensation wasn’t quite calming, not with the hot point of desire that was sent racing across his body with even the slightest of movements.

 

“You don’t want to talk about it?” Jack looped his vowels, raising a chuffing laugh from Eric.

 

“Not particularly,” he replied.

 

“Is there something else you’d rather do?”

 

The question was punctuated with a kiss to the open skin of Eric’s shoulder. He turned into the motion, asking silently for Jack to raise the kiss into his waiting lips. He did, tenderly. Eric smiled into it, reminding himself as he often did to check that he wasn’t dreaming.

 

A warm hand came to cup the rise of his cheek, followed by the rough scrub of Jack’s beard as he razzed Eric’s skin, laughing softly in a way that made the ground fall away from Eric’s heart. There more than just the sweetness of midnight kisses, a heat which had nothing to do with Eric, dependant only upon the line which spanned the space between Jack’s touch and his own.

 

He rolled them, turning over Jack’s broad chest so that he might sit atop, pushing eagerly down into another kiss. Jack’s hands roved, abandoning their spot at Eric’s face only to take up positions at his back, and lower, over a thigh exposed by the shifting of tunic fabric in the night.

 

Eric felt alive in these moments, when it seemed that he and Jack, despite being so incalculably different, resonated. He felt the vibration of it, Jack’s heartbeat and his own, the movement of his breath into the room and out of it, stealing Jack’s air, giving it back in hot puffs released between crushing kisses.

 

Jack was roused beneath him, Eric could feel its heat against himself, pressed to his stomach where Eric had their bodies close. Closeness by proximation, perhaps, but not nearly close enough for either of their satisfaction. Eric ripped at his tunic, Jack doing the same with the light pants he wore to bed, his shirt already removed at some point prior in the night.

 

It was nice like this, when they’d already extinguished the lights, or resumed their activity after a brief respite. Eric could feel beautiful in the unlit space, more human than he felt under the cold light of day. Here, when Jack ran his hungry mouth cross Eric’s exposed chest, there was no question of what Eric was. He was skin, the salty scent of bodies rubbing together, the sharp sting when Jack gripped hard upon his rear, the flush when he whispered, almost to himself, _Bits_.

 

The suspension lasted only as long as their lovemaking did. When the sweat began to cool, their spent remains wiped away by a damp cloth, Eric returned to himself. Jack was always eager to embrace him, even after a countless time spent touching in the most intimate way. Yet for Eric, this was more intimate still, Jack choosing nearness to something which was no longer an avenue for release. No longer something that could be denied as anything other than Eric himself, a boy on fire, even when he was extinguished.

 

Jack, succumbing to the lightless afterglow of their efforts, fell to a sleep that was sudden and deep. His breath came in long draws, sending shivers down Eric’s back, where Jack had his nose tucked into the nape of his neck.

 

Eric lay awake, contemplating himself and the slowly becoming familiar ache of sex. He’d bought himself a sparse few moments of peace, respite from the cyclical revolutions of his mind. At what cost, though? How much more would it hurt at the end of their travels, sleeping together as such, when Eric had to turn to Jack and pretend they were nothing more than companions on the road, to which Eric only owed Jack the thanks for accompanying him to his home in the south. He’d yet to tell Jack that his stay was not forever.

 

Once the horses were rested and the supplies replenished, Eric planned for Jack to depart. The Southern Pride was no place for him, a kind man who tucked the softest parts of himself behind layers of ice. The heat of the South was far too much for such a tactic, made hotter still by the fire which seemed to linger in Eric. Real or symbolic, a reminder of a wrongness gifted to him before even the day of his birth.


End file.
